Ah, in like a lion, out like a…lion? Who the hell knows, anymore. With record breaking lows in temperature and nigh-thrice weekly snow events to one degree or another, it seems the Winter never ends. Perfect time to crack out some black metal, of which we have representatives aplenty, alongside the usual mix of AOR, traditional, death, pagan, neofolk and electronic oddities for your perusal.

So continuing with the motherlode of material (metal and otherwise) whose mixture of melliflous melodies and malignant malcontented mania make up our monthly monograph of musical offerings (pant pant…enough alliteration, already!), we continue on from the recent February Roundup straight in to its companion piece, covering a plethora of releases dropping this month through the middle of April.

While I’m sure there will be more releases to come over the next few weeks, I’m sure you’ll agree we have plenty of material to cover herein already. So with a bow of due respect to the many labels involved, we proceed…

Welcome to Spring! Well, almost, and if you don’t count the wildly whipping changeability between relative warm weather and bitter cold snaps at the drop of a hat…didn’t that damn groundhog predict an early end to Winter? Just can’t trust anyone these days…

It’s that time of year again, with little fat cherubim shooting heart shaped arrows into the derrieres of ladies and gentlemen ’round the world. Yes, it’s Valentine’s Day and love is in the air…which means it’s probably a bad month for black and death metal.

Will darkness and hate prevail in the face of all this passion, warmth and goodwill? Well…to judge by a fair percentage of this month’s offerings, the answer is decisively…no.

But there’s still a few decided gems and hearty recommendations to be found among the dross, so read on…

Everyone’s favorite European metal labels (all 8 of ’em!) have kept busy since I posted the 3 part Spring Roundup music reviews a while back, so here we proudly present another batch of indie, underground and raw black, stoner, power, pagan and traditional metal on tap for your delectation. Be prepared to be scared…

So here we are with the second part of our new release roundup. As noted in part 1, there’s been a huge influx of material over the past few weeks, and while few of these really merit an in depth writeup, they all have some measure of interest and worth and prove deserving of discussion herein.

Thus we present this series of capsule reviews, broken down more or less by subgenre or stylistic leanings, for your perusal and delectation. As always, art or lack thereof and its interpretation remains mainly in the eye of the beholder, which is exactly what makes it so important. One man’s gold is another man’s dross, and vice versa, so if it sounds interesting to you, give it a spin and decide for yourself.

So that said, let’s continue, this time focusing on the darker end of the equation: Continue reading →